Biography of
Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde was born in 1854 in Dublin, Ireland to prominent intellectuals William Wilde and Lady Jane Francesca Wilde. Though they were not aristocrats, the Wildes were well-off and provided Oscar with a fine education. Oscar was especially influenced by his mother, a brilliantly witty raconteur, and, as a child, he was frequently invited to socialize with her intellectual circle of friends.

Wilde entered Trinity College in 1871 and focused his academic studies on the classics and theories of aestheticism. In 1874, he transferred to Oxford and studied under the divergent tutorials of John Ruskin (a social theorist and Renaissance man) and Walter Pater (a proponent of the new school of aestheticism). Wilde negotiated their conflicting philosophies as his personal life developed. He also experimented with cutting-edge fashion and homosexuality.

Upon graduating from Oxford, Wilde had a brief flirtation with Catholicism, but his independent orientation toward the world prevented an exclusive attachment to religion. In 1881, he published his first volume of verse (Poems), and he became famous enough to be satirized in a Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera. He moved to Chelsea, an avant-garde neighborhood in London, but his father's death and the family's snowballing debts forced him to embark on a lecture tour of the United States in 1882. Upon arriving at customs, Wilde made his now-famous statement: "I have nothing to declare except my genius." On tour, he dressed in a characteristically flamboyant style. He advocated for the philosophy of the aesthetic: art should exist solely for art's sake, or, as he wrote elsewhere, it should be "useless." While on tour in New York, Wilde also produced his first, unsuccessful play, Vera.

In 1884, Wilde married a shy and wealthy Irishwoman named Constance Lloyd, and the two moved into a posh house in London. Wilde briefly edited Woman's World magazine while writing a collection of fairy tales and a number of essays (collected later as Intentions, 1891), which elaborated his unique approach to aestheticism, a movement with which he was rather reluctant to associate himself. While Wilde had been socially and professionally linked to confirmed aesthetes such as Max Beerbohm, Arthur Symons, and Aubrey Beardsley, he was an open critic of the kind of reductive aesthetic philosophy expressed in the famous journal The Yellow Book. Preferring to explore his own thoughts about art and politics through idiosyncratic readings of Plato, Shakespeare, and contemporary painting, Wilde had a social circle which featured a diverse cast of characters, among them poets, painters, theater personalities, intellectuals, and London "rent boys" (male prostitutes). His closest friend, however, remained the Canadian critic and artist Robert Ross, who, at times, handled Wilde's publicity and acted as Wilde's confidant in his professional and personal affairs.

Throughout the 1890s, Wilde became a household name with the publication of his masterpiece novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, a Faustian tale about beauty and youth, as well as a string of highly successful plays, including Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), the Symbolist melodrama Salome (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893), and An Ideal Husband (1895). His last play, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), is considered the original modern comedy of manners. By this time, Wilde's extravagant appearance, refined wit, and melodious speaking voice had made him one of London's most sought-after dinner-party guests.

In 1891, Wilde became infatuated with the beautiful young poet Lord Alfred Douglas (known as "Bosie"). The dynamic between Bosie and Wilde was unstable at the best of times, and the pair often split for months before agreeing to reunite. Still, the relationship consumed Wilde's personal life, to the extent that the sexual nature of their friendship had become a matter of public knowledge. In 1895, Douglas's father, the Marquess of Queensbury, accused Wilde of sodomy. Wilde replied by charging Queensbury with libel. Queensbury located several of Wilde's letters to Bosie, as well as other incriminating evidence. In a second trial often referred to as "the trial of the century," the writer was found guilty of "indecent acts" and was sentenced to two years of hard labor in England's Reading Gaol.

In 1897, while in prison, Wilde wrote De Profundis, an examination of his newfound spirituality. After his release, he moved to France under an assumed name. He wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol in 1898 and published two letters on the poor conditions of prison. One of the letters helped reform a law to keep children from imprisonment. His new life in France, however, was lonely, impoverished, and humiliating.

Wilde died in 1900 in a Paris hotel room. He retained his epigrammatic wit until his last breath. He is rumored to have said of the drab establishment that, between the awful wallpaper and himself, "One of us has to go." Critical and popular attention to Wilde has recently experienced a resurgence; various directors have produced films based on his plays and life, and his writings remain a wellspring of witticisms and reflections on aestheticism, morality, and society.

Study Guides on Works by Oscar Wilde

The Ballad of Reading Goal was among the last written works of Oscar Wilde. The poem was written after two years after Oscar Wilde was released from prison and the poem focuses on the execution of one of the prison inmate who was in the same...

The Canterville Ghost was first published in 1887 in The Court and Society Review. The first part was published on February 23, with the second installment following on March 2. It was accompanied by illustrations. By 1887, Wilde had achieved a...

An iconoclast in his time and one of the most brilliant writers of the Victorian era, Oscar Wilde had a plethora of his works published and well received. Unfortunately, he was incarcerated for “gross indecency” and had to spend a portion of his...

The Happy and Other Tales, a collection of fairy tales that consists of the titular piece, “The Selfish Giant,” “The Devoted Friend,” “The Young King,” “The Nightingale and the Rose,” “The Fisherman and His Soul,” “The Star-Child,” “The Remarkable...

Oscar Wilde published a volume of verse with the simplest and most direct of all possible titles: Poems. The opening poem of that collection features a title that is anything but simple and direct. In fact, were it not for the exclamation point...

In the summer of 1893, Oscar Wilde began writing An Ideal Husband, and he completed it later that winter. At this point in his career he was accustomed to success, and in writing An Ideal Husband he wanted to ensure himself public fame. His work...

Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest opened at the St. James's Theatre in London on February 14, 1895, only a month after Wilde's previous success, An Ideal Husband. The packed-in audience rollicked with laughter at the on-stage...

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde's first and only novel, is a faustian story of a man who trades the purity of his soul for undying youth. It was written in 1889 and first published in the literary magazine Lippincott's Monthly in July,...

The Portrait of Mr. H. W. is a work of prose written by Oscar Wilde, originally published in 1889 in the Blackwood's Magazine. The text is often referred to as a story, however, it also contains elements of literary criticism and biography. The...

Oscar Wilde was a Victorian iconoclast who stood at the vanguard of the aesthetic movement. His works, from his Comedy of Manners plays to his verse compositions such as "Requiescat," have changed the landscape of literature in general.

Oscar Wilde's one-act play, Salome, is a loose interpretation of the account of the beheading of St. John the Baptist in the 1st century A.D. as recorded in the New Testament (Gospel of Mark 6:15-29 and Gospel of Matthew 14:1-12). While Salome is...

Oscar Wilde’s play A Woman of No Importance opened in London on April 19, 1893 and proceeded to run for 113 performances. Successful revivals were mounted on his home turf on both 1907 and 1915. Broadway was first delighted by Wilde’s adeptly...